Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Becoming a Chameleon: Understanding My Own Reactions to Change

I did a quick search on ways to increase my adaptability today. It's interesting how this term, adaptability has become the latest thing in a lot of areas, from business to sports coaching. Along with adaptability are other words: versatility, flexibility, resilience, evolution... And then, you can go into even more detail with each of those terms: emotional flexibility, high versatility, strong resilience...

Sheesh. What did I get myself into?

I think for the purposes of this challenge, I'm just going to troll through and find challenges that look like things I can actually try in real life. I'm going to try to not look for things just to ponder, but for activities that will force me to change the way I think and speak.

So, here goes:

I came across an article from The Center for Creative Leadership, an organization that has come up on my radar in recent months. This article was titled simply: "Adaptability: Keys for Success" and in it were some specifics about how to practice cognitive flexibility, emotional flexibility, and dispositional flexibility (see what I mean about the terms?). One particular suggestion caught my eye:

Understand your own reaction to change so that you can be straightforward with others.

Okie dokie. Think about change. How do I react?

Umm... Hmmm...

How about I spend the next three days with this in mind and report back? See you on Saturday...